Bottling the Woodsman
by Beeraroundtown ~ October 15th, 2009. Filed under: Homebrewing.
The Woodsman is now bottled. This beer started in concept of being a strong smoked ale around 9-10% ABV. The Scottish ale yeast got greedy and took this baby up to 11.5%. Sadly I was hoping to leave it with a bit more body, but I’ll have to wait and see how it tastes once carbonated.
Half the batch was aged on french oak soaked in Port. I was trying hard not to overdo the oak character, so I kept the contact time short. Initial pre-bottling tasting revealed a nice sweet vanilla note imparted by this and hopefully more of the complexity will be revealed once the carbonation opens the beer up a bit. Already I’m second guessing the 50% rauch basemalt. The smokiness is still a bit subdued so I might try the next go with 75% or augment with some cherry smoked malts that I just used on a mild stout recipe recently.
So far the beer isn’t to hot, fusels in check, and seems pretty easy going for 11.5%. Time will tell if this will be the winter warmer I was hoping for.
October 15th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Oh…. isn’t that nice, you make little labels for your beers. Isn’t that, uh, quaint….. ;-}
October 15th, 2009 at 10:19 am
thanks doc
October 15th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Is that one of dem dar AXE-men? ;-} Should of had one with a smile. It could have been a nice Jack-o-lantern theme!
October 16th, 2009 at 8:32 am
How’d you do the oak? I’m assuming this wasn’t actually aged in a barrel (due to thei size). How much oak did you use?
October 16th, 2009 at 8:39 am
1oz that was soaked in Port for 5 years… no not intentionally, just got out of homebrewing for a while and forgot about them.
October 17th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
The labels look awesome…and of course the beer sounds great.